Star Citizen Thread v6

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Britney

B
Oh, and the fighting scences finally after nearly 1,5 hours of watching the demo, the core gameplay mechanic that will never play out like it was shown here if you keep the multiplayer-3.0-demo in mind. Everything just seemed scripted:

Missed shot with the rail gun, space ship still goes down (jittering into the explosion): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCtdyNFwQWo&t=1h35m50s

And second missed shot, space ship goes down ["Sayonara, sucker!" :D ]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCtdyNFwQWo&t=1h36m02s

Dogfighting in this demo looks awful, standing still in midair, nose points down, no realistic physics at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCtdyNFwQWo&t=1h37m07s
 

Cotic

Cotic
cIp40tq.png


Courtesy of Schlag Sweetleaf http://massivelyop.com/2017/08/25/g...mos-real-time-player-driven-facial-animation/
 

Prince Thrakkath

P
If only he made an FPS 'or' a space-sim. I really think Chris wanted to make an FPS, but knew he wouldn't get initial funding for that so he duped the original backers to get the early money promising a traditional space-sim('best played with HOTAS' ROFL) and then changed direction to FPS. The result is 5 years proof of concept demos.
 
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UselessThing

UselessThing
Prince Thrakkath said:
If only he made an FPS 'or' a space-sim. I really think Chris wanted to make an FPS, but knew he wouldn't get initial funding for that so he duped the original backers to get the early money promising a traditional space-sim('best played with HOTAS' ROFL) and then changed direction to FPS. The result is 5 years proof of concept demos.
Click to expand...

I really don't think it would be that hard to do GTA X-Wing, if they had avoided messing about with all the extraneous stuff.
 
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Jezzah

Jezzah
Lot of media seem to be making a lot of noise about the face tech thing. Dunno why. This is a niceity at best surely? Something you can add later after the core gameplay and other things that make up a game.
 

Discjirm

D
My over-valued-at-tuppence-worth:

I didn't see all the event, I had to skip out before the crash.

The good:
*) They had something to show.
*) FOIP is interesting, but will be of niche use.
*) The stream (leastways the part I got to watch) had great comedic value.
*) Mobiglass looks cool.
*) Stunning visuals.
*) They have some really good engineers.

The bad:
*) The task was boring to watch, and far too time-consuming for a simple task. It may feel far less boring to play however.
*) There were far too many glitches and one crash.
*) It was all a bit meh. Nothing that warranted the excitement from the crowd.
*) No featureset for 3.0 or timeline (at least that I saw).
*) Showing things that will not be in 3.0.
*) Not much progress since last year.
*) They need to get professionals in to set-up and stage such demos.

The ugly:
*) No female models. It's interesting that they have a male black model after the rumours wrt Sandi last year, but no female one.
*) Nothing is completed. Nothing. Zilch.
*) They are suffering from a massive amount of technical debt; adding things like foip will not help that.
*) Their project management is atrocious.

It is interesting that they appear to have chosen things like VOIP and FOIP over VR. Have they decided that VR is too technically difficult for the small numbers of VR users, and that F/VOIP better fit their market? (F/VOIP is a much more multiplayer experience, VR only noticeable to the user).

A few years back there were arguments about whether SC's or Elite's development methodology was best: whether to build everything together, or build chunks, complete them, and then move on. It's hard to disagree that FD's approach is best. They've had a playable game (with its faults) in players' hands for nearly three years, as opposed to an incomplete tech demo.

TLDR: they have an interesting but buggy tech demo that is nowhere near being a game. If they can turn it into a compelling game it'll have been worth every year of wait. If.
 

VR StarLightPL

VR StarLightPL
I fell asleep during their presentation after they successfully (gee whizz) arrived at their destination. But all snarky comments aside... I would pretty much like to play the game Roberts envisions someday. Perhaps at retirement... who knows. TL; DR it is nowhere near release than it was in 2016 when I tried it for the first time during a free fly week - and I didn't backed it because the state it was in.

I liked the scripted demo. They have amazing graphics/UI designers, and the "multicrew" was cool too. I even liked the cringe-worthy facerig implementation as a concept. The idea of highlighting interactive parts is nothing new either but I think it suits this demo just fine... And I liked the walking around part. Seeing the world through base windows... For me it adds tons to the immersion factor.

Positional audio was laughable. What year is it, 1990? These things are expected and taken for granted...

Yeah I think Chris Roberts still has this "movie director thing" going on since the early days of FMV in Wing Commander. He really is hurting this project IMHO, because the facerig tech and the previous "big actor" hiring for S42 proves that he wants to have "an interactive movie in space". Too bad movies and games don't mix well so far.

As for "don't show the loading screen" I think it was more of a "trying to keep it a movie experience" than concealing something. They might as well use a second monitor for all "shady" stuff if they wanted to. I think it was simply ruining the show for him.

And as for the astonishment that people are still backing this... Well people like to buy in their dreams. There's also the sunk cost fallacy at play, and simple desire for this project to succeed. Nothing astonishing about that... will go on for a few years probably, unless a competitor arrives and blows everything out of the water.

Still I would like to play a game like that someday.
 

Cmdr-Wotherspoon

Cmdr-Wotherspoon
Britney said:
Everything just seemed scripted
Click to expand...

Near the end of the stream Roberts admitted that the "enemy" were using "Stormtrooper shots", but I'd agree that it looked as if they were also clutching self-destruct buttons.

The bit near the beginning, where Miles Eckhardt doesn't appear for one of the players (the second player accepts the mission) reminded me that we didn't get to see a complete game loop: like the previous Miles Eckhardt mission all those months ago, we were treated to a cinematographic experience, but whoever it was that accepted the mission didn't return to claim the reward. I assume only one of the players would have been rewarded? They didn't all accept the mission.

At the beginning of the stream, Roberts talked about how "persistence" would mean that the game remembered where you are when you log out. But they still needed to replay the first part when one of the players crashed out, which doesn't seem much like persistence to me (and the inability of the other players to take over the abandoned ship suggests that stealing a ship might only work until the owner logs out of the game).

The grim "speed run" replay of the first part of the game after the crash seemed to me much more like what the game would actually play like, if you didn't have some friendly actor-players feeding you tough-but-cynical lines from Top Gun. Get out of bed. Got to get dressed (lots of clicking). Got to walk miles to find the Mission Giver. Got to listen to his dialogue, which seems to take much longer the second time. Got to go and buy weapons. Got to take the lift to get that truck thing. Got to meet up with the friendly pilot who is conveniently hovering nearby. Got to load your truck. Got to fly slowly up through the atmosphere. Got to use accelerated travel to get to the mission location.

All of that is lovely to watch, but it will get mind-numbingly tedious if you need to repeat all those steps over and over again just for a few minutes of combat action, which in itself depends on another team of players accepting the equal-and-opposite mission and happening to arrive at the location at the right time to ambush you. And also depends on your game not crashing.

I love watching these fond imaginings of what the game might be like if it were a movie, but it's not a game. Not even close.
 

VR StarLightPL

VR StarLightPL
Jezzah said:
Lot of media seem to be making a lot of noise about the face tech thing. Dunno why. This is a niceity at best surely? Something you can add later after the core gameplay and other things that make up a game.
Click to expand...

That's because the current gaming trend is aimed at MMOs and communicating between players is a part of that trend. Look at discord's success, look at streaming success over the last few years. This tech is the future, most probably. In 2013 it was ahead of its time. Now, when the webcams are becoming ubiquitous and people make a decent money from streaming it is a logical step forward. No wonder media caught that drift :)
 

Memnoch

M
Discjirm said:
A few years back there were arguments about whether SC's or Elite's development methodology was best: whether to build everything together, or build chunks, complete them, and then move on. It's hard to disagree that FD's approach is best. They've had a playable game (with its faults) in players' hands for nearly three years, as opposed to an incomplete tech demo.

TLDR: they have an interesting but buggy tech demo that is nowhere near being a game. If they can turn it into a compelling game it'll have been worth every year of wait. If.
Click to expand...
If they had gone down the FD route and established a solid base on which to build newer, more in-depth gameplay features on that would have helped them immensely. Did anyone watch through the design of the mobiglass watch. The detail on that thing is insane, down to leather stitching on the inside of the strap. You would be forgiven for thinking this was a digital mockup of physical goods for a Kickstarter campaign. But no, this is going to be in the game.

Yet they haven't got a realistic looking flight model for the small vehicles, although the Idris one looked about right.
Don't have an economy system in place.
Don't have mission givers.
No gameplay loop at all that I can discern.

Yet they are paying someone to design a watch which, for all intents and purposes is useless, as I'm sure the designers can have that mobiglass projected interface appear above your forearm whether you are wearing that watch or not. It doesn't do anything itself other than look pretty, and if you aren't playing on a 4k monitor its probably only going to be 20-40 pixels across so you won't see any of it anyway.

It really is both shocking and depressing. I was watching a streamer on Twitch when the video above was on and I asked in the chat whether they thought the "average" space sim fan really cares about the detail that's been put in to the watch. He said no, but then SC has never pretended to be average. Completely missed my point as I wasn't referring to the game at all but the players buying it.
 

Jezzah

Jezzah
StarLightPL said:
That's because the current gaming trend is aimed at MMOs and communicating between players is a part of that trend. Look at discord's success, look at streaming success over the last few years. This tech is the future, most probably. In 2013 it was ahead of its time. Now, when the webcams are becoming ubiquitous and people make a decent money from streaming it is a logical step forward. No wonder media caught that drift :)
Click to expand...

Suppose you are right (sadly). Media making a big fuss over this niche feature when they really ought to be asking some hard questions.
 

GuruNot

GuruNot
Jezzah said:
Lot of media seem to be making a lot of noise about the face tech thing. Dunno why. This is a niceity at best surely? Something you can add later after the core gameplay and other things that make up a game.
Click to expand...

Well then, I reckon that was mission accomplished for CR. After all I think they only included the face tech thingy to distract everyone from the lack of "core gameplay and other things that make up a game" :p
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
ZeeWolf said:
/r/gaming has a much more balanced discussion and CIG could do with reading some of the top rated comments which point out quite rightly that it's starting to become a demo technology showcase rather that a game. Yeah, people are starting to notice that.
Click to expand...

Well, reading the comments were rather interesting, and i couldn't help but dive in and add my tuppence worth.

It does kind of show what a part of the gaming community outside of star citizen feel about this, and shows that we skeptics are not some sort of minority in relation to this.

On the other hand, seen the odd thread about ED in /r/gaming, and the comments there are often negative as well.

Maybe we are all much more niche than we even suspected, SC and ED both.....

Nah, always knew ED was going to be pretty niche, and i'm sure FD did as well. CIG on the other hand, i think they think their game is going to have mass market appeal... not sure it will.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
By the way, am i the only one who doesn't want a webcam looking at my face while i'm playing a game?

And just to put my tinfoil hat on for a moment, but what's the chances of CIG gathering all this facial data and selling it onto a third party....
 

Britney

B
Cmdr-Wotherspoon said:
Near the end of the stream Roberts admitted that the "enemy" were using "Stormtrooper shots", but I'd agree that it looked as if they were also clutching self-destruct buttons.

The bit near the beginning, where Miles Eckhardt doesn't appear for one of the players (the second player accepts the mission) reminded me that we didn't get to see a complete game loop: like the previous Miles Eckhardt mission all those months ago, we were treated to a cinematographic experience, but whoever it was that accepted the mission didn't return to claim the reward. I assume only one of the players would have been rewarded? They didn't all accept the mission.

At the beginning of the stream, Roberts talked about how "persistence" would mean that the game remembered where you are when you log out. But they still needed to replay the first part when one of the players crashed out, which doesn't seem much like persistence to me (and the inability of the other players to take over the abandoned ship suggests that stealing a ship might only work until the owner logs out of the game).

The grim "speed run" replay of the first part of the game after the crash seemed to me much more like what the game would actually play like, if you didn't have some friendly actor-players feeding you tough-but-cynical lines from Top Gun. Get out of bed. Got to get dressed (lots of clicking). Got to walk miles to find the Mission Giver. Got to listen to his dialogue, which seems to take much longer the second time. Got to go and buy weapons. Got to take the lift to get that truck thing. Got to meet up with the friendly pilot who is conveniently hovering nearby. Got to load your truck. Got to fly slowly up through the atmosphere. Got to use accelerated travel to get to the mission location.

All of that is lovely to watch, but it will get mind-numbingly tedious if you need to repeat all those steps over and over again just for a few minutes of combat action, which in itself depends on another team of players accepting the equal-and-opposite mission and happening to arrive at the location at the right time to ambush you. And also depends on your game not crashing.

I love watching these fond imaginings of what the game might be like if it were a movie, but it's not a game. Not even close.
Click to expand...

Yes, that is the major flaw. Even if all this will be technically possible one day on an online server, this demo doesn't resemble the play culture of online games or video games in general. It is obvious that all this stuff works only when everybody sticks to an existing script (in this case I mean the actual behaviour in the online environment), friends and foes alike. These experiences are impossible to resemble in a real online environment, see the non-scripted gameplay they showed of the actual version of Star Citizen the days before.
 

Rolan

Rolan
Star Citizen: Meet the RSI Constellation Aquila
[video=youtube;sIEeXIBVjLY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIEeXIBVjLY[/video]

Gamescom: Day 2 Live Show Notes - Erin & Chris Roberts
Summary
Erin Roberts

What can we expect from what we have in the Gamescom demo versus 3.0 release?

  • Gamescom demo is one moon - they deactivated Quantum drive. 3.0 is the whole Crusader system plus space stations. Some of the systems are disabled in the Gamescom demo. There’s a huge amount of work that has gone into bringing all of the systems together. Trying to get 3.0 to everyone as soon as possible.
What have been the biggest blockers in the development of 3.0?

  • There’s a few. Getting all of the systems into place. Re-writing the entire multiplayer infrastructure - allowing server transfers so we can get more players in. Object container streaming is a huge piece as well and not all of it will even be in 3.0, some will come in 3.1. Pick up & carry and trading. Also, getting all of the character customization and weapons in. Getting ship items working. Getting all of it to work together is a big thing.
How many players in a server are you targeting for 3.0 release?

  • I don’t want to go into numbers right now but as many as we can. Will exponentially increase afterwards.
Can we expect 24+ players?

  • You can expect what we have now and probably more.
You can now focus on parts of your ship you want to interact with by pressing the F key. Will there be more added to this system?

  • You can press F and see what you can interact with. This ties in with the AI interaction system as well. They have routines - if they’re a maintenance person they will maintain the ship and fix things. You can follow an AI and watch them go through their daily routine - work, eating, sleeping, etc. Working towards the living, breathing world. As a player you can do a lot of the same sort of stuff.
  • Proper oxygen system in leads to inherent gameplay - you remove oxygen from a room and anyone not wearing their helmet may die. Also, you can kill power and affect life support systems.
Bounty hunting – would taking out an NPC take out a shop completely?

  • If you take out a shopkeeper, another would take it over eventually. Once proper AI is working, player won’t be stopped from killing people. Some places you’ll have to check your guns, but most locations you can use your weapons, but there may be significant consequences. Want systems with freedom, but with consequences.
Missions involving other players – counter missions, how will those work in 3.0?

  • Because they know what missions they create, they know what other missions to create to push players against each other. They know company has hired player X to protect a cargo run, but then on the seedier side a mission comes along saying there’s a cargo run, take it out, creates the mass PvP and PvE gameplay.
  • Can use lore to do this – pirates that dislike each other, etc… even at that later, can have group 1 protecting cargo, group 2 trying to take the cargo, then group 1 (in 3.1) will be able to do an APB to offer money to bring other people in to help out, completely player driven. Can affect the economy based on the local situation. Supply and demand. If a base needs materials, there’ll be missions created to get those.
3.0 has procedural moons, birth of survival mechanics in SC – oxygen, stamina, etc… - what else is planned for survival? Food, water?

  • Not for 3.0, but players will, as they go forward, be as immersed as possible. You will need to eat food, if you don’t, your life will go down. If you go without food you won’t run as well, you’ll lose health. Same with water. If you don’t shower, NPC’s will react differently. 2-3 days of real life playing the game, not 2-3 days game cycle. No timelines directly yet, those’ll be tested, but there will be a timeline that makes sense. Won’t be so much of a chore that it won’t be fun, but there need to be reasons why you need food, why you have dinner, etc…
Right now, everyone’s spawning into Daymar, everything has finite fuel. How will that work when planetside?

  • Call a friend with a Starfarer, etc… there will be stop off areas to get repairs and fuel though, and on some of the moons.
Cap ships? Idris? Javelin?

  • Coming along very well. They’re all used in SQ42, so they’re a big focus. Hope to show it very soon. They’re basically built outside in. No spoilers, but they’re doing Vanduul ships now as well. You’ll get in your Idris, be able to fly with friends, man turrets, etc…
What’s the most impressive ship to use so far?

  • Bengal is huge. Nate Dearsley’s team showed off some Bengal shots, it’s a hugely impressive ship. It’s 1km long. There’s a station in SQ42 that’s 12km long, fully fleshed out. It’s a large part of the SQ gameplay.

Origin rework? 600?

  • Coming along really well. Reworking all the ships, lots will drop with 3.0. Ship team have a really good pipeline going. Gladius’ been updated, lots of work updating and improving things.
Lots of excitement for careers. No mining at launch, but what will be in 3.0?

  • Cargo running – buy & sell cargo, missions’ll be created about that. Buy it, steal other people’s sell it, etc… Also bounty hunting, find and retrieve missions, and mining will be the next thing they work on after 3.0
When 3.0 comes out – players are used to spawning in Olisar if they’re good or Grim Hex if they’re wanted. Can we choose spawn points in 3.0?

  • 3.0 is the first implementation of persistence. Ships and items will persist, also where you stop. If you fly to a location and log out there, you will reappear at that location. Where you end up and where you want to be, if you don’t have a ship you need someone to take you places. Also ship damage will persist. If your ship blows up you’ll need to get a new one from insurance. Players need to start being precious about what they have. For respawning, you’ll respawn in the last location with a medical station that you were in. They’re working on making sure people can’t gameify that too. If you’re in a ship and you log out in the middle of deep space, the ship will probably hang around for a bit, but then you’ll log in exactly there when you log in again. Lots of work to do as systems start working, people will start to play the system, then they’ll find ways to fix that.
3.0 is a huge implementation

  • Huge undertaking. When people see what’s in there, systems, mobiGlas, everything, Gamescom are just wandering in 1 planet, there’ll be loads of things to do.
How is netcode coming along? Can we expect a framerate improvement?

  • They’ve torn out everything they had before. It wasn’t built to do anything to scale, so the network team have been rebuilding the core tech. Lots of that’s in. There’s still more to do, but lots of the work isn’t just that they have to rewrite things, it’s also about making sure that what happens is the gameplay programmers have to take that work, and make sure gameplay is calling the proper routines. Network team rewrites everything, then engine team and game programming team move over to it. They’ve been doing this for months. Should notice a lot better latency. At launch there’ll be bugs, but things will be much faster. Everything they’ve done is the basis for the server transition stuff. When a server can control anything from a room to a system and they can transfer people from server to server, then everyone can be in one game universe. If 500 guys want to be in one room, that whole room will be one server, and when they leave, they’ll be passed on to other servers. They want everyone to play in the same universe, without instances.
Not too long ago there was an AtV describing how to reduce data between client and game, sending everything in bursts network-wise. Will games run cleaner as they run longer?

  • That’s due more to a slow memory leak, the longer the server’s up memory gets corrupted and causes problems. In that case they’re trying to hunt down those leaks. What they’re talking about with the burst transmissions; if you’re the client, you only care about what’s around you, not if there’s a ship on the other side of the solar system. The ship has to care about everything, it has to keep all the physics and everything. Client may be running at 40 fps, but the server’s only running at 10, so everything’s fine on your side, but it takes too long to get info from the server cause it’s struggling. For 3.0 they’ve been working on getting server times back to where they need to. Servers run at 30 fps now, which will lead to a huge increase for everyone else. Getting packet size down helps latency and lots of other things, and having the server able to cope with the load helps hugely too.
Saw Eckhart last year. Approaching him and getting a mission. How multiple people trying to use a quest giver be handled?

  • There’ll be a queuing system in place. If there’s a lot of people going to the same guy in one go, whoever takes the seat next to him, they’ll work on that. They don’t know what the load will be like; right now there’s just one or two mission givers, so it’ll be busy, but when they have more they’ll see how busy they get, and work on that there. They want to work out something where, say Eckhart is there, you can click on a seat next to him, and wait for the person to leave and then switch over to that seat. That’s how it works now, might be changed later.
Mission sharing?

  • You’ll be able to share missions yes. In 3.0 you can link to your friends when you’re quantum driving so they all jump at the same time, and more work on getting friends into games together easier. Work is ongoing now, but it will be in 3.0, being able to get in with friends more easily.
Homesteading?

  • Currently you land your ship at a landing, and your ship is cleared away till you need it again. There’s air traffic control that’ll tell you where to land. If you want to go buy commodities, you put them in the ship, and they’ll be there for you when you need to leave. Hangars will be instanced, not in 3.0, but you will eventually be able to go to instances of your own hangar.
When you die in space, you spawn at the last medical facility. Temporary? Can you get your ship ordered there?

  • Yes, you can get a ship ordered there, but if you’re flying in an Aurora you can get one quickly. If you’re flying in an Idris, they don’t make them every 5 seconds, but there will be a time before you get a new one. Lots of players might need more than one ship to fly various ones as they’re being rebuilt.
Costs and challenges of operating a Cap ship?

  • Fuel will be big. Idris is a ship that you need to fly with friends / guild. It requires so many positions. One person could pilot it, but they couldn’t do weapons, turrets, if power systems go down you need an engi to fix things, etc… if you turn off the power, the power’s down. If the power doesn’t go through a conduit, if fuses get blown, you might need to reroute power to get shields back, or to go a fuse box and put a new one in to get the shields back online, etc… when people first get on their Idris, they’ll probably want to do training drills to get good and ready. People will go around repairing stuff, there’s weapons, shields, engines, system hacking, so you need people who can defend against that…
Vehicles – electronic access REC. Will there be a way in 3.0 to rent a ship?

  • You’ll be able to buy it using Alpha UEC. If you have a ship to fly, great, but you’ll be earning money in 3.0, so you can buy items for your ships and ships themselves. Might not make 3.0, might be 3.1, but yes. System’s still being explored, there’ll be more on it in AtV in the future, when they cover 3.1.
Players interacting w each other – What’s the intention for people who own large ships but only want to play singleplayer?

  • AI you can hire, though they won’t be as good as a human player. Not planned for 3.1 yet, but they’re working n that.
What’s the most impressive thing that’s been fixed in the leadup to 3.0?

  • One thing they can’t talk about, might find out in a few days. But getting items 2.0 functionality is one of the biggest wins in terms of interactivity. Could go for ages on all the tech under the scenes, lots of work from multiplayer to render, some of the render to texture stuff is crazy, lots of new tech they’ll love to show off… at some point!
And that’s it.
Chris Roberts

Question SQ42 – how far along is it?

  • Have to wait a little longer. It’s going really well, not showing it at Gamescom because Chris wants it at a certain level of polish. Lots of things they show in AtV, and some from 3.0, is specifically being used for SQ42. Some things like the Planet tech has also gone into SQ42 too. There are cases where you go down on moons or planets. Lots of high quality performance and motion capture data, making sure that when characters are moving they look great and fluid going from AI pathing to merging scenes with characters. Trying to make you feel like you’re part of the story and not just hanging with AI. It will be worth the wait.
Is there one specific feature that you’re really proud of right now, something you thought you wouldn’t achieve?

  • Planetary tech. This will be the first time the community can go and land, in the case of 3.0, moons or an asteroid planetoid. Fully realized, can circumnavigate the whole thing if you wanted to. The amount of additional playable area that comes into the game now is huge, the game will open up a lot because of that planetary tech. It’s really exciting, there’ s a lot of gameplay that will come out of it, and it’s one of the reasons things are taking longer than they’d like. Once they’ve opened up the potential of the planets though, they need to make sure there’s stuff to do. They’re not just creating the planets, but also systems, eco systems, flora, fauna, things to make it alive, things to do, things to procedurally create outposts or towns or villages beyond just the landing zones. The original version of SC was aiming to be more like Freelancer; couldn’t explore the landing zones. You’d go from in orbit to transition to a few locations in a town. Now they have whole worlds opened up. Amount of potential for exploration long-term, and for players to do things, create their own base or settlement, lots of gameplay potential. Just seeing the beginnings of it in 3.0.
SQ42 – Will there be any new things on Friday, teaser or anything?

  • Not at Gamescom.
What’s the big part that’s missing from finishing SQ42? What’s holding it back?

  • Trying very much to get the quality of the animation and the AI movement to be equivalent to what you see in prerendered cinematics. They spent time shooting with actors, 100 days of performance capture. Most big movies won’t shoot for more than 100 days. For the amount that CIG have, there’s a vast amount of performance data and animation and story, really want to make sure it comes across so when you’re playing and moving around and talking to Old Man or the various other characters that you’re playing the game alongside, because you’re basically in a movie as opposed to Wing Commander 3 and 4, you were the stuntman flying the ship, then you’d see what Mark Hamill does, in this case it’s you, you just happen to be the lead star in the movie. Getting that to the fluidity they want, cause it’s a huge story, it taking longer than anticipated.
So missions and stuff are further done?

  • They’re still working on final assets, but all the missions and chapters are blocked out. Each chapter would be several missions in say Wing Commander. They’re somewhere between white and grey boxes. They’re taking certain levels to finished. One section of the story they were talking about last year they’re still doing. They’ll be showing something at some point, but not this gamescom, and Chris would hate to make promises cause last year he said they wanted to, but it didn’t get to the point they were happy with and everyone was upset, and Chris felt back because they still showed some fantastic stuff, which in Chris’ mind was great stuff, but the hype of that was affected by them not showing SQ42. Animations and AI, going for a level of AI you don’t normally have, so when you’re on a ship you’re serving on, the Stanton which is an Idris, all the crew have a schedule. They get up in the morning, go eat breakfast, go to their job, eat after dinner, etc… and sleep, there’s a whole schedule and cycle. Almost a level of sims simulation for AI. They’ll also use that for the PU. Dialing that in while getting subsumption working; in 3.0 all missions run off subsumption, and in SQ everything uses subsumption now too, whereas before it used an older cryengine system. Getting everything dialed in to look as good or better than everything else.
How is SC designed to be experienced? One monitor? Two? Gamepad? KBM? Joystick?

  • Kind of hard to say. They build the game to support everything, from joystick to gamepad to KBM. All have pros and cons. For running around on foot FPS, KBM is probably best, for flying Joystick probably is. Mouse flight might be too easy or give an edge, but when they show stuff off, and Chris doesn’t want to spoil Friday, but it’s better to have a joystick. For Chris, he hasn’t set it up yet, but a nice wide monitor, 4k across, switch between HOTAS and MKB.
Last question – Is there someone who’s stopping you, saying Chris, you have all these ideas, but we have to finish the game, we go to this point, then we just do it.

  • In the case of Star Citizen, the concept of finishing a game is probably pretty loose. The time they stop adding stuff is probably when it dies as an online game. They’ll always add features and content to keep it alive. The moment they stop adding functionality, that’s when the game’s dead. EVE 10 years later, WoW, etc…
Question is more when 1.0…

  • Why version 1.0? At this moment if you back SC, you can download 2.6.3, 3.0 very soon, you’ll be able to go from moons. In 3.1 when Hurston and Stanton are in, you’re getting the game as it happens. It’s not like we’re not giving it to you till a certain point, traditionally a publisher’ll work on a game, they’ll tell you about it, but you won’t get to play it till right before it comes out. You’re not playing what EA’s developing two or three years before they’re building it. With SC, the idea of a finish line in a SC sense doesn’t make sense. They have a fairly set set of general features, but as new things come online like the planetary tech, they need to do new things to make things interesting, so they add new things to make it good, and ultimately Chris wants to make the most interesting experience he can. He wants to get it to the point where he feels like he’s adding additional stuff vs. getting the basic functionality in.
And that’s all for Chris.
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Source:https://relay.sc/transcript/gamescom-day-2-live-show-notes-erin-chris-roberts

Star Citizen: Gamescom Presentation 2017
[video=youtube;bCtdyNFwQWo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCtdyNFwQWo[/video]

Gamescom 2017: Gamescom 2017 Presentation Summary
Source: https://relay.sc/transcript/gamescom-2017-gamescom-2017-presentation-summary

Maybe a better TLDR later
 
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